La Frontera

Artist list

Velvet da Vinci is proud to present La Frontera (The Borderlands), an exhibition of contemporary jewelry that explores the physical space where the complicated relationship between Mexico and the United States is most evident. At 1,969 miles long, the border has the largest number of legal and illegal crossings in the world. An estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants currently live in the United States, according to studies by the Pew Hispanic Research Center. Concerns about illegal imigration combined with the increase in drug trafficking and violence instigated the controversial construction of the border fence, which is now 700 miles long and counting. This timely exhibition occurs as the US Congress is considering an immigration reform bill that would extend the Border Wall an additional 700 miles and add another 20,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents. Still, the border is a vibrant and vital corridor and its extremely porous nature allows not only the passage of illegal arms and drugs, but also of valuable ideas and projects, families and culture.

Inspired by this tumultuous environment of deserts, mountains, rivers and flow of diverse nationalities, the 90 artists of La Frontera created 150 pieces of contemporary jewelry. The materials range from canvas, polyester, porcelain, water bottles, photos, and paint, to more precious ones such as steel, copper, silver, and gold. Cristina Celis, one of the participating artists from Mexico, explains her necklace Dactilar (2013) made of porcelain, gold and silver: "The practice of erasing the information that is part of the fingers is common. Knives, acid, fire and even surgery are some of the mechanisms that undocumented immigrants are turning to in order to erase their fingerprints and avoid deportation."  The dangers of the border are also discussed in U.S. artist Julia Turner’s brooch, Three Days Walking (Mourning Brooch, 2013), which features red dots that refer to the NGO Humane Borders’ map identifying the places where people die while attempting to cross the border.

Mexican writer Benito Taibo poetically described the show in his essay (written for the exhibition catalog), as  “conceptual art that uses the body, the neck, the wrist, and the shoulders as a canvas to shape, in all its splendor, the bewitched, the fantasy, and also the sadness that is the frontier and what it signifies. It’s a final frontier that eats its children and the children of other territories and then spits them all over the land, transforming [them] into different beings, with different passions, all in search of a place in the world.”

La Frontera was curated by Mike Holmes and Elizabeth Shypertt, founders of Velvet da Vinci, and Lorena Lazard, from Mexico City, who has been a practicing jewelry artist for more than 20 years. The exhibition opened at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City in June to wide critical acclaim from press and visitors